Free Trouble Me: A Rosewood Novel by Laura Moore Page B

again.
    “Oh, good,” Ted replied with a satisfied nod. “As you’ll soon discover, Hayley’s a sweet kid. Bright and eager. Rob’s doing a marvelous job parenting.”
    She tried to smile at the enthusiastic endorsement, but it was hard to reconcile her memory of him—the quintessentialhard-assed cop—with Ted Guerra’s description of Rob Cooper as a first-rate father.
    “Actually, Jade, Hayley was one of the reasons I thought you’d be the perfect hire. You can relate to what she’s going through, having lost a mother yourself.”
    Ted Guerra’s comment caused Jade’s brow to furrow. She was fairly certain she’d never heard anything about Rob Cooper’s wife dying. If she had, she must have stored the memory in some far recess of her mind. Avoidance was key in dealing with anything pertaining to Officer Rob Cooper. Heck, she even made elaborate detours whenever she was in town so she wouldn’t pass the police station and perhaps catch sight of him in his scary mirrored aviators and unsmiling face. She had this unshakable fear that if she so much as jaywalked, he’d catch her at it. It was absurd, but, hey, wasn’t that the definition of superstitions, that they defied the rational?
    But the news that he’d lost his wife made Jade feel a pang of sympathy for him and his motherless daughter. How rough for both of them. “Uh, I don’t think I’d heard about his wife.…” Her sentence dangled as she tried to remember if she knew the wife’s name. Nope, a total blank.
    “Rebecca,” Ted supplied.
    “When did she die?”
    “It was several years back. As I said, Hayley’s a great kid, extremely well adjusted. But at this stage of development, issues can arise unexpectedly. I think you’d be the right person to help her handle any emotional problems that might occur.”
    “I appreciate your faith in me.”
    And, really, wasn’t this why she wanted to teach in the first place? She wanted to help kids, share with them the things she knew and had experienced. That Ted Guerra believed she had the potential to help a child made her more determined than ever not to freak just because thelittle girl’s dad had been as frightening as any bogeyman to Jade’s teenage self.
    But she was no longer that unhappy teen. When she saw Rob Cooper again, she’d probably laugh herself silly over how utterly non-intimidating he was. Heck, he’d probably developed a gut from a steady police-officer diet of donuts.…
    Rob finished his last set of chin-ups, the veins bulging in his arms as he pulled his body up and held it, releasing slowly as he dropped to the ground. He walked over to the sit-up bench and switched places with Eric Drogan, his workout partner. Forty crunches followed by three minutes of jumping rope and the set was complete. Next they grabbed medicine balls for wood chops, side throws and slams, squat presses, and push-ups. They ended the last part of the workout with a set of plyometrics: lateral hurdle-jumping and tuck jumps.
    “Damn, that was brutal,” Eric said, toweling the sweat off his face and neck and plucking his soaked shirt from his shoulders after he and Rob had stretched their hamstrings and quads.
    “Yeah, it felt good, didn’t it?” Rob grinned as he brought his water bottle to his lips and chugged.
    “That’s because you’re five years younger than me and don’t spend your day sitting in front of a computer. We’ve got to get Scott in here. I want to see him cry.” Scott and Eric had been on the football team in high school together, Scott playing quarterback, Eric wide receiver. They’d remained best friends.
    “He’s got Emma designing workouts for him.”
    “Forget it, then,” Eric said. “He’d kick my ass and then offer to write a freelance article describing it in detail for the
Courier
. And in spite of Scott having slept through Mr. Jawolski’s Honors English class, it’d be a damned good piece. That lazy SOB writes better thanmost of my staff reporters.”